Victoria’s hot springs mecca launches three luxury eco lodges

For a place geared towards relaxation, Victoria’s Peninsula Hot Springs can get busy. But it’s a relaxing kind of busy. Visitors flock to the 17-hectare site at Fingal on the Mornington Peninsula, about 80 kilometres from the city, to soak in the therapeutic geothermal pools and associated wellness experiences. But even when the place is at its peak of busyness, the throng is broken up – the landscaped tea trees, sheoaks and banksias create dappled zones around the many pools and there’s plenty of room for all.

Break away … Peninsula Hot Springs.

Now there’s a new premium experience far from the crowds, and it comes with private soaking pools.

Peninsula Hot Springs, which celebrates 20 years of business next year, has just opened three new Eco Lodges in a quiet, previously unused space overlooking a reed-filled waterhole that attracts native birds.

Eco Lodge suites have the added bonus of private pools.

They join the springs’ 10 glamping tents, which opened in 2021, as accommodation options.

Each low-rise timber-clad lodge comprises nine rooms and a Peninsula Suite running off a common corridor.

Room baths can be filled with the site’s geothermal water.

The lodges can be booked as a whole or rooms and suites separately – but it is the suites that have the private pools. Each room, however, has its own bath that can be filled with the site’s geothermal water.

The lodges have no TVs, nor sound systems, and though Wi-Fi is provided, you’re encouraged to switch off. The Eco Lodges are aimed at sleep and include self-guided sleep therapies on an in-room tablet as well as sleep masks and block-out blinds.

There’s also a new massage therapy suite where talented therapists provide blissful sleep-supporting massages, and it’s a mere two-minute stroll back to your sumptuous lodge bed.

A fine buffet breakfast featuring local produce is included at Peninsula Hot Springs’ excellent Spa Dreaming Centre Dining Room and some packages also include a two-course dinner of nourishing meals with a Peninsula-focused wine list.

You can order room service – the suites have dining tables for eight.

It’s worth making the trek over to the restaurant, though. After all, it just might be the only one in Melbourne and surrounds where clothing is optional – meaning you can sit down to dinner still in your fluffy white towelling robe, presumably with a swimsuit underneath.

From $930. See peninsulahotsprings.com

The writer stayed as a guest of Peninsula Hot Springs.